Extract from BORDERLANDS OF GLASGOW by T.C.F. Brotchie

Journalist on the Govan Press.
Superintendent of Glasgow Museums and art galleries.
Thought to have been written 1925

"Where our car tentacle ends (Burnside. ed), the way leads through the railway bridge and on to the highway, which bears upward on the left. Go straight ahead. The road is on the shoulder of the Cathkins, and steadily rising, gives the wayfarer a clear glimpse of the great mosaic of industry and agriculture which forms the countryside. The highway dips into a tree-shadowed bend, rises and passes a picturesque wayside smiddy. So to Greentreehill—a place-name suggestive of pleasant things—where the East Kilbride road goes to the right. (may have been Greenleeshill. ed) We will reach the upland village later on and by another route. Meantime, keep straight ahead and upward, with Dechmont Hill—our immediate objective—and its flagstaff nodding to us to come along. And at Greentreehill we are 431 feet above sea level and in the midst of a countryside rich in colour, and if you go in summer days you will find yellow the dominant keynote, tiny golden pimpernels and bird’s foot trefoil, yellow iris in the marshy hollows and great golden patches of the mustard plant fretting the green fields, a brilliant foreground to the purely grey masses of the city upon which we are looking down.

Another mile’s tramping, easy going, as it is downward, and, keeping a sharp eye on the left, you will catch the footpath which takes us through the field into the wood that fringes Dechmont. A stiffish climb carries you to the flagstaff, at the base of which you are exactly 602 feet above sea level. For a modest hill, Dechmont is endowed with a remarkable vision. Its setting is ideal, a bold ridge rising out of a comparatively level strath like the prow of some great ship heaving upward from the waters of the sea. The outlook is impressive. At our feet is the tall, grey, high-shouldered Gilbertfield, the battlemented Scottish keep of the seventeenth century; Cambuslang, Uddingston, Coatbridge, Airdrie, dark smudges on a smiling landscape; coal mines have scarred the green country, their lofty brick stalks showing above the tree tops and sending smoky pennons athwart the sky line: far ayont the greys of commerce Ben Lomond is seen, a delicate blue silhouette in the north, while dim on the south-east are the round shoulders of Coulter Fell, and the sharp tipped pyramid of Tinto, with the Pentlands etched delicately against the southern horizon. The spirit of Romance has fled from the landscape, but he has mercifully left his cloak, and out of it there emerges the wonderful vista I have described. On Dechmont crest we are standing on an old ancient place. From time immemorial up to the beginning of last century, the Beltane fires were lit on Dechmont; the foundations of ancient buildings lie beneath the green sod, ancient coins have been found, and human remains which mouldered into dust when exposed to the air—links with “old, unhappy, far-off things,” and with an age and a race which have vanished into the mists of memory."